Books, books, books...

[Cult of Jared]

Despite all that the books are an easy light read and really do keep you turning the pages to find out what happens next; I think that is the secret of their success.

It was pretty hard to keep turning pages in some of the later ones.

I attribute their success to escapism. Leave my muggle life behind, and enter a fantastic castle filled with the 'magic of love'? Yes please.

I loved the first half of the series, they were so charming. This isn't just a broom, it is a 'Nimbus 2000'. The later books felt more like a terrible JRPG:

-Searching for the twelve macguffins of the apocalypse.

-Meaningless random encounters in a nondescript wooded area.

-Endless whining from heroic children.

-Bleh.

[pabosher]

I've always believed that, on the whole, Rowling isn't a particularly strong writer. She has a great imagination though, and her simplistic writing skill has allowed her to reach a monumentally large audience.

[Thyroid]

You lot. Here's one of several reasons why Harry Potter is so popular.

I read the first Harry Potter when I was eight and it had just come out in paperback. I haven't read it as an adult, but I will say this: Us kids loved it because it made us think it was there. The book opens with a dull, boring life of a very uninteresting British family, and even gets into Harry's school life ("I don't know. I'm rather good at math"). It then tells us that Harry is a wizard (yeah) with this amazing past he knows nothing about.

Is there anything more boring than school? So wasn't it the best thing ever to imagine, even hope, that we could get a letter to somewhere that was a little bit more magical? Even if it was school?

I mean, we knew it was stupid; no owl was going to reach us when we turned eleven to tell us to come to Hogwarts, but that's where the book's power lay. Once it opened-up our imagination to the idea of a magical world being integrated into our own - that, you know, just around that corner is Diagon Alley, if only you know how to get to it - we'd take anything, and everything wonderful just kept coming. It was a book about us; kids. Any adult who got it was just lucky, but us kids knew, instinctively, how wonderful it was.

The first four books were all excellent like that. Five I read as a 13 year old, so I knew how frustrated Harry felt about things. 6 I disliked; 7 was just dark and scary, even with its silly moments.

It's why I'm so reluctant to re-read the books as a 21 year old. :/ Sometimes you're lucky, but I think I'll refrain from Harry Potter until I get a little nostalgic.

Edited December 11, 2010 by Kroms

[Sully907]

I'm reading the book "The Tyranny of Oil" by Atonia Juhasz right now. It's pretty blatantly coming at the problem of Big oil companies and their perceived policial and eocnomic clout from a biased perspective. It's hard to take the book as objective when the author comes out talking about how the big bad oil company is ruining the whole economy and the environment and hates the average worker, but some of the more salient points make for a good read. I'm learning a lot about how the oil futures markets work, and how the de regulation of the american, and the world economy in the 70s and 80s led to a lot of these companies becoming maybe too large again, like it was with standard oil in the late 19th century.

[Ben X]

("I don't know. I'm rather good at math")

You must have read Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone.

[ThunderPeel2001]

It's why I'm so reluctant to re-read the books as a 21 year old. :/ Sometimes you're lucky, but I think I'll refrain from Harry Potter until I get a little nostalgic.

She did a great job of reminding me what it felt like to be a teenager again, so I wouldn't be too afraid.

You must have read Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone.

Ha! Very good

[miffy495]

You must have read Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone.

Not necessarily. He could also be Canadian. Our version was named "Philosopher's Stone," but most people over here just call it "math."

[Patters]

IT'S MATHS FOR FUCKS SAKES.

[miffy495]

Hey, I was raised that way too. I'm just pointing out that most of my fellow citizens don't say it the right way.

[Ben X]

Not necessarily. He could also be Canadian. Our version was named "Philosopher's Stone," but most people over here just call it "math."

Ah, but my joke was that in the Sorcerer's printings, as well as changing the title, they probably also went through and changed "maths" to "math", and "wand" to "magic-stick", that kind of thing.

[Thyroid]

I *did* read Sorcerer's stone. But the "math"/"maths" thing is more likely due to a memory of what is an obscure, non-important line in a book I read in 1998.

Edited November 30, 2010 by Kroms

[Sleepdance]

[sight]...Stone of wisdom....

Edited December 8, 2010 by Sleepdance

[Roderick]

Continuing my push to read lots of classics: as an interlude before finishing War and Peace, yesterday I read Hemingway's The old man and the sea in one sitting. It was short and very touching, and very interesting. I do love a good maritime story. Now that I've read it, though, I feel I've only probed the first layer of many underneath, that might only unveil themselves as I become older or experience certain things.

[ThunderPeel2001]

I think I might check that out. Thanks for the recommendation

Tangent warning

I know this will mean less than nothing to most of you, but I need to get it out: I've been re-reading Buffy Season 8 (the comic series that follows the show). I was mightily disappointed in the "big reveal" at first (I won't spoil it, but for those who don't know what I'm talking about, there was a big reveal about four fifths in that the series had been building up to), but I decided to go back and see if it worked better the second time around... It did.

Sure, there's still problems where the main thrust of the story seems to get lost, and the whole "world united against Slayers" thing happened far too fast and far too unrealistically. (When do people agree on anything... Let enough people caring enough to have an opinion.) But for the most part the series is way stronger than I first noticed.

It turns out that the big reveal was actually hinted at right from the beginning, and there was a pretty accurate explanation of that "Twilight" was, too. Apparently, if you were paying attention, and not waiting for the comic to hold you by the hand, it actually spells it out several times, very plainly. I was just doing a rather crappy job at being a reader the first time around. So I was happy about that...

I was even happier to discover that this final arc, the one I've been reading tonight, is sooo good that it's got me all worked up the way the series did when I watched it. In fact, thinking about the original series is a great analogy for how I feel right at this moment, having just read the penultimate issue.

Hopefully some of you who will have watched TV shows on DVD that they have LOVED. If so, you'll know the feeling I'm currently exploding with... the "just one more episode" feeling. Actually, it's worse than that, it's the "there's only one more episode to go" feeling. It's the feeling that makes you late for work the next day, because you just can't go to bed without watching that final episode...

And there's been some MAJOR Buffyverse events happening here... I need to know what happens next. The only problem is, I can't just press play on a DVD: The final issue, the season finale, isn't out for another five weeks. FIVE WEEKS.

I think I might die.

I have no idea how regular comic readers (who buy the "new issue" of their fave comic every month or so) cope. (Well actually, I'm also baffled how they can get so excited about a story told in piecemeal over a period of years, but...) How do they do it? How do they cope with tortuous moments like this when the final moments are being withheld for weeks?

It's a wonder to me that comics have survived as a form of entertainment... it's more like cruel and unusual punishment.

*sigh* I guess I'm just too impatient... Everything is available in a second these days, but dammit - I need to know now, because now is when I really care. I fear that in five week's time I will have lost this feeling.

Anyways sorry! I just had to get this feeling out so I can sleep now. Good night!

Edit:

Question for anyone who's read where I'm up to:

OMG! Sorry, that wasn't a question, but you know the bit I'm referring to. Anyways, why did Buffy destroy the seed? I hope there's a decent explanation in the final issue for her sudden strategy change... As far as she was concerned, how did she know? It's almost like she did it on accident... Although I suppose she'd never kill Angel. No matter what. (But if there was a time I'd forgive her...)

It also seems to me to be a little weird. Surely it would have made more sense if she HAD killed Angel. Yes, the Buffyverse would never be the same, but hell, death isn't always the end. But it would have led to Xander telling Buffy about the need to destroy the seed... which could have led to the fight between Buffy and Willow, as seen in Goddesses and Monsters, and it could have led to the beginning of the apocalypse, as seen in Fray. (And explain why there was no record of the shared Slayer power --- all modern mediums being destroyed in the apocalypse, leaving only old books to tell the tale.) And we know how Whedon likes post-apocalypse stories... Season 9 could have been all about that!

Hell, something has got to give! The seed can't really be destroyed... unless Willow is about to do something really bizarrely weird and impossible (and evil), I don't see how she's going to turn bad. Agh, issue #40 will reveal all!

Edited December 9, 2010 by ThunderPeel2001

[vimes]

I completely forgot to write about it - not that it's super important - but I've vanquished The Brothers Karamazov about 2 weeks after my initial post.

It's a monster of a book, that really bears the mark of being serialized over several years : a bunch of characters and themes are introduced very late in the book and the whole narrative structure oscillate between trying to paint all aspect of a small and self contained community and plotting encounters between pairs of character to stage a clash of their behaviors and beliefs. The latter is kind of confusing at first, because Dostoyevsky writes as if he completely adopts the character's point of view as he's voicing it (there's a narrator to the tale but who he is is particularly confusing) which leads to having opposite points of view expressed with the same sincerity a few pages apart... I had never read that kind of stuff before and it's kind of inspiring because, what he ends up constructing is a character-centric moral system in which he doesn't seem to have any influence on. It's not true of course but he's so good that it appears so. Anyway, apart from the passion oozing from every pore of each character and the hysterics that seem to drive most female characters, it's pretty modern and, as far as narrative structure goes, it's something I'll definitely champion in gaming.

I've also finished a Tale of Two Cities, which I didn't find 'special' except when Dickens neglected his main characters to focus on the french revoltees. I love how he depicts the revolution has a monstruous event whose legitimate roots couldn't prevent it from instantly mimicking the barbary it's reacting against. It goes back and forth between empathy and disgust and I really enjoyed the feeling this creates. There are a few allegorical segments that are really worth reading, but the main plot felt completely bland to me. BTW, the book can be read for free on Google Books.

[Squid Division]

I'm confused as to your reasoning for the narrative structure being indicative of the book's serialization. From the very beginning the entire book is nothing but small encounters and conversations with characters. It sounds like it's your first Dostoevsky book, but all of them are like that. The only glaring mistake I can recall that shouted 'serial' to me was the fact that the old woman's age changes (the one whose daughter is in love with Alexei, I forget her name).

For other Dostevsky books, I recommend Demons. It's very philosphically layered, but a little easier to sort them out than Brothers Karamazov is. Notes from the Underground is one of my favorite books ever, and is absolutely necessary for Crime and Punishment I think. It really establishes the ridiculousness of C&P's question of the ubermensch.

For anyone reading anything in Russian literature - look for the Pevear and Volokhonsky translations (English obviously). They're really good. And never use a free translation of anything ever. /Greek major, Russian minor done too much translating rant

[ThunderPeel2001]

Thanks for the tips! I always forget that with foreign books the translation is REALLY important. It's good to know which are the good ones to look out for.

Edited December 11, 2010 by ThunderPeel2001

[vimes]

Yep, it's my first Dostoyevsky, but I didn't mean that the book's serialization was hurting the structure. It just seemed that having constant delivery for two years might explain why small pockets of new topic and some very peculiar narrative devices popped up every now and then; without being foreshadow anywhere. I understood it as the author exploring new ideas he suddenty wanted to explore without the ability to retrofit them but that might be wrong.

[Squid Division]

Ah ok. In that sense the narrative structure and dialogue-rich episodes does fit with serialization. Never noticed that before. However, Dostoevsky was always pretty meticulous with the thematic strings; that stuff doesn't change on a whimsy. His other novels are very tight in that sense and Brothers Karamazov was his last. I could definitely see how someone would feel that way as there are so many different things he deals with in that book, I don't even remember them all.

[Orv]

I was constantly on the side of Snape.

(I sort of ignored this whole conversation until now.)

I'm glad I'm not the only one in the universe that feels that way.

Even more with Alan Rickman playing him.

[Thyroid]

I was trying to list some "meaty" modern writers the other day. Living bros and brotettes* who put a bit of literature in their story. I couldn't expand my list beyond these guys, and some of those - the ones in italics - are people I know from reputation only, by which I mean that I haven't actually read anything by them.

Care to help me expand the list?

Michael Chabon

Don DeLillo

Umberto Eco (this based on Chris Remo's gushing)

Cormac McCarthy

Haruki Murakami **

Thomas Pynchon

Philip Roth

* coining words for your benefit; it's what Shakespeare would've done.

** (sort of; I think South of the Border, West of the Sun is literary, anyways, but the Japanese claim he isn't)

Edited December 11, 2010 by Kroms

[Roderick]

Surely this is going to end in another huge spectacle about what is the definition of literature?

[Squid Division]

Orhan Pamuk and Toni Morrison definitely from personal experience. David Mitchell from reputation.

[Thyroid]

Surely this is going to end in another huge spectacle about what is the definition of literature?

I guess what I mean is, something with "meat". Not Dean Koontz and James Patterson. That probably doesn't make sense in a large context, but this is just a list made by some online duders who have *some* inkling on what that word could mean.

[Roderick]

Righto I can't help with the list though, I've read next to no modern fiction.